Quotes About Perception

People believed what they wanted to believe, no matter what was right in front of their eyes.

The world just feels different for those of us who come alive after dark. It's more fragile and unreal, a replica of the one everyone else inhabits.

You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside.

Peter took a shuddering breath. He wondered what his fish had thought, expecting the cool blue of the sea, only to wind up swimming in shit.

I've always been able to see you, I say. It's a rather lovely view.

Maybe honesty is overvalued. What's truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear.

but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.

What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.

You cannot trust perception. Falling, at first, feels like flying.

I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah-but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black or white.

It is amazing, what you can make yourself believe, when you have to, Josef says. If you keep telling yourself you are a certain kind of person, eventually you will become that person.

Only the liar knows he's lying

Edward: Wait--you were trying to hit on me? Susan: Damn straight. Edward: The thing is, I'm not. Straight, I mean.

it it strange, suddenly having a memory come back out of nowhere. you think you're going crazy; you wonder where this recollection has been hiding all your life. you try to push it away, because you think you've hammered out the whole timeline of your life, but then you see that one extra moment, and suddendly you are breaking apart what you though was a solid segment, and seeing it for what it is: just a string of events, shoulder to shoulder, and a gap where there is room for one more.

She stares at me for a moment, and then she bursts out laughing. "You haven't seen his perfect little wife and his perfect little girls. Believe me, Oliver, I'm not the great love of his life, the one he'll never forget." "You are to me," I say.

And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

What if what you know isn't what people want to hear?

My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling?

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

The problem was , you never heard anyone say,wow, check out the brain on that babe.

Then Henry speaks again. Did he do it? I turn to him slowly. Does it matter?

This is when I realize that Anna has already left the table, and more importantly, that nobody noticed.

We all have stories we tell ourselves, until we believe them to be true.